SEO For Landscapers: Cheat Sheet To Increase Website Traffic

The internet is just too vast, and standing out can be an uphill battle. Even if a landscaping website does stand out, it might not necessarily generate suitable leads. Optimizing your website can help you generate organic leads. But the optimization process requires some SEO research and application. You are probably wondering if SEO for landscapers is truly worth it?

A decent SEO strategy can help you generate more leads within a small region. You can take it a step further and target people from specific demographics. So, content marketing and website optimization are crucial for developing a profitable landscaping business.

To learn how to use SEO to your advantage, you need to understand what it means. Too many people pay experts to do their website’s SEO for them without knowing what they are paying these people to do. Here, I’ll explain what SEO is and how you can use it to develop your landscaping business.

What Is SEO For Landscapers?

SEO stands for Search engine optimization. It is a compilation of many different aspects that helps your website stand out amongst other similar websites. However, the overall strategy and design for SEO are different for each business type. SEO for landscaping companies tends to be more regional.

Most people use Google to navigate the internet. That is why SEO strategies revolve around how Google ranks websites for search results. Your primary goal with SEO is to rank at the top of the search result of your chosen keyword. Landscapers tend to use keywords like landscaping, gardening, lawn care, etc.

Another thing to note is that proper SEO strategy works gradually. You can't shoot right to the top of the search results after a few days of doing SEO. You need to be adaptable and change things little by little every month to drive more traffic to your website.

To do that, you need a comprehensive understanding of how the system works. That includes relevant technical knowledge and the knowledge of the demographic situation of your target audience. Most people do not think this deeply and follow a set of rudimentary guidelines. Even the people who sell SEO services can often be negligent in this regard.

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On-Page, Off-Page, and Technical SEO

Before getting into the specialized strategy outline of a lawn care SEO, you need to cover the basics. There are three primary factors of SEO that require your attention. I’ll explain their specifics below:

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1. Off-Page SEO

Off-Page SEO is more like promotional content than anything. It can help increase your domain authority and traffic volume through outside interactions. Now, what do I mean by that? Any activity that helps promote your website off-page, outside your primary domain is Off-page SEO. Off-page SEO is also a popularity ranking. It determines where your website ranks on the SERP.

Many people are under the misconception that Off-Page SEO is based entirely on link distribution, but that is not wholly accurate. There are plenty of other aspects to Off-Page SEO. Things like blog influence, social media tags, unlinked mentions, and every other promotional content fall under Off-page SEO.

Think of every mention, link, or any other advertisement as steps on a ladder. The longer your ladder is, the higher your website can climb in the SERP. That will, in turn, increase its traffic volume and domain authority.

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2. On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO is fundamentally different from Off-Page SEO. The difference lies in how the two of them evaluate the website. On-Page SEO is more about the content of your website rather than a popularity ranking.

On-Page SEO deals with every internal aspect of the website. That includes content, keyword usage, internal linking, URL, Meta description, etc. One of the most common ways to do on-page SEO is by using internal links. Using External links of other high authority domains can also increase your On-Page SEO.

But what makes an On-Page SEO successful is the actual content. The more useful the content, the better it will help you rank up. That will also passively influences Off-Page SEO since people will refer to your page more often.

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3. Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the technical aspect of a website. You see, popular search engines have strict structural requirements for websites. Those that fail to meet these requirements can never rank high, no matter how good their content is. Search engines favor websites with technical compatibility.

Enabling SSL on your website, and making it mobile-friendly are the most common ways to increase technical SEO. Other than that, the responsiveness of the website also affects the Technical SEO. There are also some additional elements of technical SEO like indexing, rendering, and crawling.

Crawling refers to how search engines discover website updates. It is how they find updated links, new pages, and remove dead links. Indexing is how a search engine lists all the visible data of a particular website. A poor technical SEO makes these things much harder, and search engines will place those on a lower ranking.

Now, you might be wondering which of these SEO aspects has higher priority. While it may sound like a good idea to focus on one of them to the extreme, it is not a viable option. Technical SEO is the backbone of the website. It acts as the ultimate foundation. So, you are better off not neglecting it unless you know what you are doing.

Selecting between On-page and off-page SEO is a classic dilemma. You cannot put one over the other. They both work to make your website more popular. So, neglecting either of them will lead to reduced traffic.

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SEO Strategies To Get More Leads

Now you know the basics of what SEO is and how it works. It’s time to delve into a more specific territory. Here is a list of SEO strategies for landscaping businesses:

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1. Keyword Optimization

Keywords are the guiding beacon for a website. People do not know anything about your website, rather they search specific keywords that lead them to your website. Since you own a business, you probably know the importance of choosing the right keywords already.

Keywords come in two types. The first type is the buyer intent keywords. You can’t find them in separate categories, as all keywords are shown in one mixed bag. Learn how to spot these two types to make the most conversion.

When people search lawn care services in a specific region usually, they are fairly certain of buying the service. You can count this as a buyer intent keyword. But if they are looking for landscaping ideas, that would be a research intent. They might look around for new landscaping ideas, most likely won’t buy a service right away.

You need to separate these keyword categories and then put them into relevant articles or sections of your website.

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2. Localize Your Campaign

You can tweak your website to show up on search results all over the world or you could limit it to just a local region. Now, most lawn care businesses are regional. You can’t make a trip two states over to trim some hedges. It makes no sense for either party.

So, you must optimize your SEO to target the people in your region. To do that, first, you need to provide accurate information about your contact info and location. The physical address is crucial for this to work. Google determines local ranking based on relevance, distance, and prominence.

Your business description needs to match with the keywords people search for. There is a pitfall here. You can probably add keywords like “lawn mowing” in your website’s content. But a lot of people search for tutorials. This type of activity might get flagged for relevancy, and lower your ranking a bit.

Your business also needs to build up prominence to show up on search results more often. That refers to how well known your company is to the local populace. But it does not end there. You also need Google to know that information.

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3. Focus On Collecting Reviews

Customer reviews are one of the most consistent ways to increase search ranking. Both Google and Bing factor client reviews while calculating ranks. So, you have no reason to overlook this aspect. Not only that, but these customer reviews have a snowball effect. Meaning it will steadily increase your ranking while also encouraging others to leave a review.

However, customer review is a double-edged sword. Good reviews can boost reputation and authority, but negative reviews can just as easily lower that. You probably don’t need to worry about it if your customers are satisfied. But it’s always better to remember these details.

However, customers might not feel inclined to make a trip to Google and write a review. Try to facilitate them by adding a review plug-in to your website. You can easily make it more convenient by adding the link with the project completion Email. These Emails are necessary to build connection and brand loyalty, so never skip them.

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4. Optimize Website Content

Google loves to read, and so do most other popular search engines. These engines will go through all the data on your website to get the gist of whatever service you are trying to peddle. These search engines will crunch through your written content word for word. They also consider the structure of your content.

The landscaping company website should have detailed information about all the services you offer. Writing things like “we offer gardening services” is a very vague way of informing people. Instead, try to make a separate page titled “Gardening”. You can then make short descriptions of all the gardening services, their estimated cost, and so on.

Naturally, your content needs good grammar, and a readability score. The search engines do not consider literary devices when they judge your content. They judge purely based on machine intelligence. So your content needs to cater to both people and the machine. After that, you must include all the relevant keywords throughout your content.

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5. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

One of the easiest ways to boost SEO is making your website support mobile platforms. Mobile platforms are the go-to platform for most people these days. That is why search engines consider it a mandatory factor when judging websites.

But supporting a platform and providing them the optimal service are two different things entirely. Some cheap website developers make makeshift mobile support that takes ages to load. That can leave a very negative impression on most people.

Search engines will consider the ease of access and the loading time of your website while making the ranking. As a landscape company owner, you have no reason not to implement a mobile-friendly website as most of your clients will be on the mobile platform.

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6. Backlinks

Backlinks are a great way to boost local reputation and domain authority. See, backlinking is when a completely different business mentions your website in their content for reference. That can be as a friendly form of acknowledgment or a form of cooperation. The latter is more likely for local businesses.

Local businesses can generate backlinks more often than inter-state or global businesses. You can easily find construction services or other somewhat related service companies. Then come into an agreement to promote each other on everyone’s websites. That can bring a lot of profit for all parties involved.

You can also earn organic backlinks by providing informative content. As a landscape company, you can provide tutorials for certain tasks or give maintenance tips. The best way to do that is by making video content. Many people will share and refer to these contents and generate a lot of authority for your website.

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7. Write A Compelling Meta Description and Title

The average attention span of a human is less than 10 seconds. That is why the first impression matters far more than it used to. Your website needs to have a compelling domain name to give a sense of credibility instantly. The next thing after that is the meta description.

A website’s meta tag is the short description people see below the title. They do not need to click on your website to see it. Rather, it is the thing that compels them to click. Think of it as an organic advertisement. From a psychological perspective, it helps grab people’s attention.

But it also needs to have relevant keywords and information about your page. That structure will make search engines place your website on a higher rank. Also, the description space is short so be creative with it.

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8. Involve Social Media

Social media improves quite a few things about local businesses. It can even act as the primary platform for a startup. A landscaping company can use social media to promote its services and encourage client communication. It also improves visibility and organic traffic.

However, social media cannot be the primary platform for a landscaping company. That would only work if you were already popular among the locals. Otherwise, it’s best to keep it as a subsidiary advertisement platform.

Social media does affect SEO, but only passively. Other than the popularity boost, search engines do not generally count social media presence when making ranking lists. But you can still benefit from it if other people share your social media content and mention your website.

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Importance of Content Marketing for Landscaping Businesses

Content marketing is far more impactful for landscaping SEO than most other businesses. It is a business that relies heavily on content to generate leads. Most local businesses also need to build credibility with the locals even before taking on a job.

The only way to do that is through making top-quality content. You can think of it as the primary marketing strategy even. However, many people don’t know what type of content they should churn out for the public.

One of the easy ways to get more content ideas is through keyword search. Look up all the relevant keywords related to landscaping. See what the people in your area are searching for most often. You can even find what type of plants most people keep based on geography.

Write articles on how to take care of the land. If your region has extreme weather, write about lawn maintenance tips for that season. Don’t worry about losing your business opportunity by giving away free advice. Most people are too lazy to do this sort of thing themselves when they have options available.

The content you publish will act as your credibility. People will use them to judge your skill level. They will know that you know what you are doing. That will make them more likely to hire you than anyone else.

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Conclusion

I hope reading this helped you understand the basics of SEO for landscapers. The strategy mentioned here is not an ironclad rule. Also, try not to focus on only Google, the other search engines can also help you generate traffic. Thankfully most search engines have similar SEO requirements.

The search engine requirements get updated fairly often, so keep an eye out for that as well. Ideally, you should check them every month.

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